Annual conferences can be a valuable platform for helping your attendees — and their organizations — develop and retain future leaders, aka “hi-po’s.”

Most conversations about the use of artificial intelligence in the events industry focus on use cases that improve workforce productivity and performance for repeatable processes. Here are approaches that not only help you but help your event participants implement AI within their own organizations.

It’s important to recognize those who make significant contributions to our communities — and engage our audiences while doing so.

The Exhibitor Advocate recently released its 2023 Annual Survey of Exhibition Rates. This report compares material handling, labor, and equipment costs across 24 major U.S. destinations. Here are two takeaways you should consider.

“What gets measured, gets managed,” is a phrase coined by management guru Peter Drucker. For annual conferences, this is best accomplished by identifying and adopting a combination of leading and lagging performance measures.

Here’s a simple project-management tool that can help streamline internal communications — and clarify accountability — for annual meetings. 

In his book Customer Centricity, Wharton’s Peter Fader writes that “in the world of customer centricity, there are good customers — and then there is pretty much everybody else.” He recommends focusing on and investing in retaining the former, while not ignoring the latter.

A number of associations have found a lag between their annual convention attendance, which has recovered since the pandemic, and exhibit space sales, which have not. If your sponsorship menu and prospectus look similar to 2019, a refresh can help you seize this growth opportunity. 

According to the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR), the business-to-business exhibition industry is still in recovery mode, which has been challenging on many fronts for event organizers.

For many annual meetings, the Great Resignation has resulted in erosion of loyal, regular attendees and an increase in first-timers whose experience can be improved with guidance on the best course for them to follow during your program. 

Key vendors who service the events industry lost a great deal of experienced talent during the pandemic and they haven’t fully restaffed. Here’s how event organizers can ensure they are still getting the service they require.

Before the pandemic, one could argue that jobs with life-and-death consequences were surely more stressful than planning an annual conference. But things have changed.